<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>The Mare by Rook_Rabble</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057489">The Mare</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rook_Rabble/pseuds/Rook_Rabble'>Rook_Rabble</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Danish Folklore - Fandom</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Boogeyman - Freeform, Dreams and Nightmares, Fear, Night stalker - Freeform, Shapeshifting, dreaming horses</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:48:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,010</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25057489</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rook_Rabble/pseuds/Rook_Rabble</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She comes at night, she knows you're fears, you're dreams, you're deeds, and she'll go deeper. And there in the dark she'll wait, until the lesson is learned. The Nightmare is coming.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. An empty bed and No good deeds</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Underlines________________my personal comments, enjoy:)<br/>Actually i don't make silly comments for dreams and nightmares, they can be a serious subject for some.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The Maren</strong>
</p><p>
  <span class="u">Nightmares pfffh, yes we all get them, in between. But where do they come from? what are they? Who are they? Why are she visiting?</span>
</p><p> </p><p><span class="u"><strong>Everyone has nightmares</strong><br/></span>The maren was a malevolent being, often a ruined woman who, by riding on sleeping people, evoked nightmares and drained them of energy. The maren came in through small crevices and holes and mostly searched where the men slept. But also animals, especially horses were ridden by the mare, and this nightmare was often so violent that one could find the horses sweaty and so exhausted that they were unable to work. And their mane was filtered and intertwined in a strange way, mostly called marelocks or mare-braids.<span class="u"><br/></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="u"><strong>A woman in the dark</strong><br/></span>The nightmare itself was an eerie dream, accompanied by a tightness on the chest, shortness of breath and sweats. The maren could assume many different shapes and also objects. It could, for example. be a big furry cat, a sewing needle, a ball of yarn, an apple or a hen. Men often saw the mare as a naked woman figure.<span class="u"><br/></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="u"><strong>I left my bed?</strong><br/></span>It was widely believed that Maren was a woman whose mother had a magical birth. The mother had crept naked through the fetal membrane from a foal. This intimate contract allowed her to give birth without pain, but the price was a curse that hit the child. If the child was a girl, she would occasionally have to act as mare, become a boy, he would act as a werewolf. The woman could, with or without knowledge of their own transformation, act as a mare. It could be a malicious person or a secret lover who, in the shape of a mare, sought out who she had in mind.<span class="u"><br/></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="u"><strong>Mare-cross</strong><br/></span>There was a myriad of advices on the mare and her nightmares. One of the safest ways was the so-called mare-cross. It was a five-pointed star that had to be drawn out in a row. The cross was to be placed over the place where the mare plagued person was sleeping. There was also the ''eight-leaf rose'' (danish: otteblads rosen), which was used in Norway, was a double mare-cross. If they were able to reveal who acted as mare, she could never ride or torment anyone at night again, and the curse would be broken.<span class="u"><br/></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="u"><strong>Learn or forget</strong><br/></span>Over time, the stories of the maren have been discussed with eroticism, and became the explanation of why young men get wet dreams. (Not to be confused with a Succubus). In modern times, we know that nightmares typically come after an unpleasant experience or misdeed one regrets, and the subconscious makes the nightmare, in a rather realistic or imaginative dream that typically deals with the subject. So no matter how one would interpret the mare, she can be seen as a hard teacher or a terrifying memory one would just forget.<span class="u"><br/></span></p><p> </p><p><span class="u"></span><strong>A world of dreams.....and nightmares</strong><br/>All over the world there are tales and accounts of this specific being such as: Alp an imp in Germany. Ejjeljaro '' nightwalker'' in Hungary. Pasanta a large hairy dog with steel claws in Catalonia and ''Night Hag'' an evil spirit, from British and North American folktales which produced sleep deprivation or night terrors, a very violent often physically harmful condition than a nightmare.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The captured mare/The nightmare horse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Easy come, easy go<br/>Filly fright night</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>The captured mare</strong>
</p><p><br/>There was once a man who was plagued with nightmares every night. He complained of his distress to his friends who were wise to nightmares. They knew that the mare could get through even the very smallest crevices. They therefore asked the man if there was any hole somewhere in the bedroom. ''Yes, it was right there. There was a hole in the ceiling, which had come to light when a shaft had fallen out. They said to the man: '' Yes, you just go to bed tonight, then we go up to the attic. When we hear you moan, we put a stick in the hole. Then you have the power over the mare" It was like this, if you clogged the hole that the mare had entered from, she could not escape again. At night, the two in the attic heard the man moan, and they put a stick in the hole. At once the man awoke, the mare had no longer any  power over him. He lit a candle and saw a beautiful naked girl standing next to his bed. He fell in love with her and married her. After a while, he jokingly asked his wife: ''Do you want to see where you came in to me? She would very much like that. The man crawled up into the attic and took out the stick. But immediately the wife disappeared out of the hole and he never saw her again.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>The nightmare horse</strong>
</p><p><br/>In Åkirkeby on Bornholm one evening a man came out into the stable. Here stood a filly and was very troubled. The man stood and looked at it a little. Then he suspected that the filly might have been plagued by a mare. He went up to the booth to investigate it. Because he knew that a sure sign of nightmares was marelocks, so he looked in the mane. And quite right - a marelock was forming. He looked at the lock and felt something like a needle, but it was so soft that he could bend it. He pulled out the needle and walked away from the filly to examine it more closely. Sure, there was an eye pin and it was so soft that he could bend it all the way around. He now inserted the tip into the needle eye and threw it into the manure. When he came to the stable the next morning, he saw to his astonishment that the neighbor's wife was jabbering. She couldn't get up from the manure because she had her legs up over her neck. So it was the neighbor's wife who, in the shape of a needle, had visited and rode the filly in the evening.</p>
  </div></div>
</body>
</html>